Use It

Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare fiddle?

--Katherine Mansfield, born on this day in 1888

To Let It Go, To Let It Go

There are moments when I'm with my son, on a playground, holding him in my lap, snuggling him in his sleep, when I see him and my heart spins, completely taken over by love. Today, the moment happened as he mounted the bright orange stairway of the playground, holding onto the yellow railing, climbing higher and higher above my head, into the blue sky. For a second, his little body blocked the sun just as I looked up at him, and the glow around his body flooded me with that full-soul love.

It's in moments like these that I imagine all the other mothers and fathers in the world, and how they must experience these moments, too. So much love, so much light. It seems like the earth would get knocked off its axis with this much love flowing out into the world.

When he was first born, in that rush of hormones and new love, I would wake up in the middle of the night and realize that one day, he was going to grow up, and I was going to have to let him go into his own life. (Two new parents recently joked that they were planning to "homecollege" their daughter. We all laughed because it feels so true, especially in the sweet new days of a baby's life.)

Maybe it was a bit much, to pre-live that distant transition when my son was barely two weeks old. But maybe it wasn't.

I felt the same breaking open when I read this poem. From Mary Oliver, of course, high priestess of nature and poetry. Speaker of spirit, spinner of breath.

Read it as a prayer.

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Four Years Away

in dreamsWe were in Dallas last weekend, visiting dear friends and seeing their new home. While in town, we visited the Dallas Arboretum, which was featuring a Dale Chihuly installation. I've loved his work since first seeing it in 1999 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The gardens were gorgeous, the Chihuly pieces were strange and breathtaking as always, and there were 50,000 pumpkins scattered throughout the garden, culminating in the Pumpkin Village.

The Arboretum also features five adorable "Small Houses of Great Artists," which are little playhouses created in the style of five great artists: Georgia O'Keeffe, Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso, and Claude Monet. Each house is surrounded by beautiful landscape and features a placard with the artist's biography.

Felix was pretty restless by the time we came to this part of the garden, but as we passed the adobe style playhouse of Georgia O'Keeffe, a line from her biography jumped out at me.

...she stopped working as an artist because she knew it would be impossible to distinguish herself within that tradition [imitative realism].

Now I've read several books about O'Keeffe, but I'd never before read that she completely gave up painting for four years. Wikipedia confirms this and places this moment in the fall of 1908, when she was 21 years old.

This stunned me, to think that Georgia O'Keeffe, this monumental female artist whom I revere and respect, had such a large crisis of confidence that she would abandon the idea of a career in art for four whole years.

I have no large conclusions to draw from this knowledge. But I will feel less alone in those darker moments when I wonder what all of these words and photographs are building towards.

In Awe of Toddler

This morning, I mixed up a beet, blood orange, and ginger smoothie for the three of us to share. I filled Felix's purple and yellow sippy cup with the thick crimson liquid, and handed it to him. He ran back to his room to sit at his child-sized table and chairs, the same table and chairs I played with as a child.

When I tasted the smoothie in my cup, I realized it was probably too tart, too earthy, for him. He did seem to want to play with it more than drink it. He sat in his little chair, his right arm slung over the back, the cup dangling on its side from his little hand. He watched me as I stood on his mattress and tried to take down the bent curtain rod and detached bracket. I turned around to see his tilted cup, on the verge of dripping beet juice all over the beige carpet.

Imagining permanent beet stains in the pile, I asked him to hold it up right. He did for a second, then let it tilt again, looking at me. I asked again and he complied and relaxed again. We repeated the cycle for a few times, him watching me the whole time, until I stopped what I was doing and sat on the floor in front of him to ask him if he was all done. He was, so I put the cup out of reach.

Later, he held a mini turkey and cheese muffin in his hand in the same position, slung over the back of his chair. I didn't notice until he looked at me and made the same tilting motion to see my reaction.

Light filled my brain in that moment as I beheld him and realized what a little scientist he is, constantly testing his theories, experimenting to understand the natural and manmade laws that surround him. I realized that it is not self-evident why I want him to hold up his cup. He knows nothing of stains, ruined carpet -- ruined anything, really. It is all information for him; for now, the only judgment he knows comes from us, his parents and other caretakers. A can of exploded baking powder all over the kitchen floor is just information, not a disaster or ruined morning.

He watched me with that expression to understand my reaction, not because he was causing mischief or intentionally disobeying me, but because he truly has no idea what I want or why. He is figuring it out all the time. Now, I'm sure there will come a time when he goes against these rules on purpose, but even then, I see how he will be doing it to express a need that needs addressing, filling.

People often say that it must be wonderful to be a baby, that they have it so easy, but I think that's over-simplifying. I think it must be intensely difficult on very basic levels to be a baby, toddler, child in this world.

Imagine if an adult were dropped into a new country or even planet where they didn't speak the language, were in a new physical form that they had to get used to, and were surrounded by rules that seem clear to everyone else but them and have real consequences for breaking them. Most adults (myself included) wouldn't have nearly the humor and awe that most children have in the midst of such challenges.

I am constantly amazed by small, new humans; their tenacity, gentleness, enthusiasm, and determination inspires me. Their lives depend on understanding us -- very literally; if they do not connect and attach to us, they run the risk of being cut off, neglected, abandoned (emotionally or physically) -- yet they manage to be loving, open, honest, and excited in the middle of that enormous vulnerability.

I feel so grateful to be living with one of these small creatures. Even in the middle of exploded baking powder and random face slaps and floors covered with books and toys and laundry.

Calling 100 Plants By Their Names

On my morning walk today, I was enjoying looking at all the plants around me and rolling their names around in my head. I got to wondering if I could identify at least 100 plants by name -- including trees, flowers, grasses, etc. I'm pretty confident that I can.

So, to get this list out of my head so I can go on with my day, here it is:

1. ZZ plant
2. Schefflera
3. Peace lily
4. Ficus (or weeping fig)
5. Airplane plant
6. Common tree senna
7. Eve's Necklace
8. Goldenball leadtree
9. Live oak tree
10. Shumard oak
11. Flameleaf sumac
12. Mexican plum
13. Snapdragon
14. Lantana
15. English ivy
16. Golden pothos
17. St. Augustine grass
18. Bermuda grass
19. Horseherb
20. Pomegranate tree
21. Rosemary
22. Sage
23. Cilantro
24. Crape myrtle
25. Pride of Barbados
26. Agave
27. Hackberry tree
28. Mimosa tree
29. Desert willow
30. Burro's tail
31. Dracaena
32. Juniper
33. Red-tip photinia
34. Oleander
35. Lavender
36. Miniature roses
37. Celosia
38. Stock flowers
39. Bird of paradise
40. Jade plant
41. Money tree
42. Desert rose
43. Texas mountain laurel
44. Cenizo
45. Crow poison
46. Clover
47. Begonia
48. Jacaranda
49. Bottle brush
50. Bougainvillea
51. Orchid
52. Columbine
53. Esperanza
54. Fern
55. Fig tree
56. Muhly grass
57. Mother-in-law tongue
58. Dusty Miller
59. Lily
60. Carnation
61. American beautyberry
62. Turk's cap
63. Bluebonnets
64. Texas paintbrush
65. Black eyed susan
66. Firewheel
67. Annual phlox
68. Passionflower
69. Purple coneflower
70. Jalapeno plant
71. Crabgrass
72. Broccoli
73. Purple leaf plum
74. Orchid cactus/night-blooming cereus
75. Heather
76. Elephant ear
77. Stinging nettle
78. Trumpet creeper (or Witchy Fingers)
79. Ageratum
80. Dahlia
81. Poppy
82. Azalea
83. Amaryllis
84. Baby's breath
85. Zoysia
86. Pecan tree
87. Dandelion
88. Palm tree
89. Redbud tree
90. Heliotrope
91. Echinacea/coneflower
92. Yaupon holly
93. Cedar tree
94. Honeysuckle
95. Aloe vera
96. Dogwood tree
97. Magnolia tree
98. Catalpa
99. Gardenia
100. Forsythia

The amazing thing is that I have grown or helped to grow (or kill) at least 50% of the plants on this list. I got to about 75 easily, just off the top of my head. The last 25 I did have to look at photos of common Austin plants to remember that I know them.

I love plants. I love gardening. I love growing things. And I love words and the proper names for things in the world around me. Now, to make this list grow to 200!

How many can you identify around you?